Jory Strong: Healer's Choice

What if she were to touch the guards and enter the shadowlands with their spirits? What if she were to stand before the ancestors and answer yes instead of saying she was there to heal?

Would it destroy her gift if the ancestors chose punishment? If, rather than healing, her touch led to the making of an outcast?

Rebekka trembled at the prospect of risking it. Healers who killed or willfully harmed another corrupted their gift. Everyone knew it.

She was as frightened of turning her gift into a thing that destroyed others as she was of whatever Allende had in store for her.

Rebekka wavered, hands clenching and unclenching in uncertainty. If she attempted it, she’d have to be quick and accurate. Even then there was no guarantee it would work without the touch of her palms to the bare skin over the guards’ hearts.

Every choice seemed ultimately to lead to death—either spiritual or physical.

To taint her gift was to taint her soul. How could it be otherwise? Gift and spirit for a healer were the same.

To taint her soul was to never be able to stand before the Were ancestors, to never again be welcomed in Were lands. She’d been warned about both.

And yet to go meekly, in the hopes she could endure whatever punishment Allende intended to mete out . . .

The slowing of the car sent a raw panic through her. Visceral terror followed with the sight of a man standing by the side of the road, an apparition dressed in a black, hooded cloak and wearing a leather mask to conceal his face.

Too late she attempted to place her hands over the guards’ hearts. They grabbed her wrists, keeping her palms from contacting their skin as if they’d guessed she might be capable of bringing them to the attention of the ancestors.

She struggled against being removed from the car. Struggled then to escape and flee into the woods, but she was no match for even a single Were, much less two of them.

Thick arms tightened around her chest with enough force to make breathing impossible. Immobilized her with the silent, ruthless promise that continued resistance would lead to broken ribs as she was taken to where the man waited.

“Good, she has some instinct for self-preservation,” he said, his voice making Rebekka think of jagged, metal edges. “I was afraid she’d hardly be worth the money when your lord said she was a healer.”

A gloved hand emerged from the cape, a velvet bag in its palm. With the flick of a wrist he tossed it to Allende’s man.

The guard caught it, and Rebekka heard the unmistakable sound of coins. He pocketed it then accepted a length of rope.

“Bind her wrists in front of her and put her in the sidecar. There’s a metal loop in the floor. Secure her to it.”

Rebekka looked to the right and noticed the narrow path for the first time, and in the center of it, several yards away and hidden from the road, the motorcycle. She began struggling again, only to feel the sharp pain of ribs being compressed almost to the breaking point.

She stopped fighting, tears streaming down her face, breath whooshing in and out of her lungs as the grip around her chest loosened. Pride kept her from pleading, from begging as the guards carried out the masked man’s instructions.

When she was bound in place, secured so she couldn’t escape the sidecar, the man pulled a strip of cloth from his cloak. Rather than order the guard to do it, he wrapped it around her head, blindfolding her.

The bike shifted with his weight. The engine started and they began moving.

“WITCHES,” Aryck spat again as pain engulfed him when he crossed the wards separating the red zone from the area Levi said was set aside for gifted humans.

The same curse sounded in his thoughts but remained unspoken a short time later when they found one of the Wainwrights in the doorway of a sigil-marked house, there to usher them inside with ominous words. “Levanna waits. She saw your coming and knows the reason you seek her out.”

The matriarch sat in a darkened parlor. An ancient, sightless crone who made Aryck think of midnight horror stories told to shivering cubs around the fire pit.

“Time runs out for the healer,” Levanna said. “It runs out in the brothel as well. After Allende metes out the punishment he wants witnessed to those he feels betrayed him, or intended to, he plans to sell their contracts to the Pleasure Venture . It arrives in port shortly.”

“What do you want?” Aryck asked, unwilling to drag the bargaining process out and risk being too late to save Rebekka.

The matriarch turned white-moon eyes on him and the hairs rose at the back of his neck. “A favor owed. One from each of you.”

“Accepted,” Levi said, Lion stare offering the same challenge it had on the Constellation .

This time Aryck couldn’t be goaded. He was the enforcer. Son of the alpha. His life, his eternal soul, he could forfeit. But even for Rebekka he wouldn’t betray the Weres, or destroy the very thing her presence on their lands had brought about. “I won’t become a tool to use against the pack or those it forms alliances with.”

Laughter greeted his pronouncement, making his skin crawl as though he’d landed in a spider’s nest. “Done,” the witch said.

From the depths of her black garments she pulled a small willow cutting, the ends brought around and lashed together to form a circle reminding Aryck of Rebekka’s amulet. A red cardinal feather hung in the center, attached to the frame by a beaded string.

Levanna cupped the charm, holding it against her lips and whispering a spell. When she was done she held it between her thumb and forefinger.

An unnatural wind stirred, moving through the willow circle and carrying the feather to the end of the string at the same height as the hand holding it. It continued to point in the same direction when she transferred it to Aryck.

“I saw only one man with Rebekka,” Levanna said. “Perhaps you’ll reach her in time. Perhaps not. Annalise will show you out.”

As Aryck followed the witch with the skunk-striped hair to the front door, he said to Levi, “Do what you can to save the outcasts. Rebekka would want it. Seek help from the Iberás you spoke of earlier. I’ll go to Rebekka.”

LIKE the day she’d been blindfolded by Annalise and taken to a client, Rebekka couldn’t guess how far they traveled, or where they were when they stopped and the motorcycle engine was silenced.

She expected to be left blindfolded. Instead the man removed it, and she immediately knew why.

It took effort to keep from whimpering at the sight of the house. It sat in isolation, surrounded by a dense forest of pines. Every window was covered by bars, not to keep the predators out, but to keep the prey in.

Behind the mask, pleasure emanated from the man. “Should I tell you what’s in store for you now, or would you prefer to take a tour of the house first?”

“Now,” Rebekka said, somehow managing to force the word out.

He laughed, a sound resonating with such pure evil her skin chilled and broke out in gooseflesh.

“You’re going to be quite a bit more fun for our potential initiate than I anticipated.”

She couldn’t stop herself from shivering, from desperately searching the woods for a flash of cardinal red. He saw both actions and laughed again.

“No one will come to rescue you. But it would hardly be sporting if you didn’t have a chance to save yourself.”

The man moved around the motorcycle, leaned down, and untied the rope from the metal loop welded into the floor of the sidecar. “I’ve changed my mind. I think you’ll better appreciate your situation from inside the house.”

He stepped away and jerked hard, using the rope binding her wrists like a leash. “Come along. Your company will arrive shortly and I’m sure you want to be ready for your guest.”